What Has Happened to Our Society?

Do you remember a time when government was this involved in your life? Am I missing something here, was government always this involved in our lives, was it always the central part of the news of the day and I just did not see it.

We have come to a fork in the road when it comes to the amount of government that we allow into our lives and the division it brings us, the people. The question I have is why? Is it because we have allowed it to or have forces outside of our control steered us this way.

When did we as a society allow ourselves, our government to become so combative? With what I know and have seen I believe it started during the Clinton Administration but even President Clinton worked with the opposing party to attempt to move his agenda along. I say that it started in the Clinton Administration only because at that point we allowed a President to lie to the judiciary branch with no real consequences.

I believe we really ramped up and started down this combative path in the George W. Bush Administraton. At that point we started to become not only combative in our political parties but combative in our society about politics.

That brings us to another question and that is what came first the chicken or the egg. By that I mean did this combativeness start with the political parties which then filtered down to our society or did we as a society become combative and that filtered up to our political parties. Has the media feed into this combativeness in order to obtain ratings, readers and money?

I believe the combativeness started in our congress and then filtered down to the people which then started a loop of anger, disgust and a more entrenched my team your team attitude. I also believe that the media keeps stoking this anger and combativeness for reasons of ideology and ratings.

This loop has been feeding itself starting in the Clinton administration then increasing to lower levels in the George W. Bush administration and to even lower levels in the Obama administration. It has seem to go to an entirely new low under the Trump administration.

We can sit here and blame each other, each team/party or we can realize what has happened to us and attempt to change it.

The third question is how do we change this combative, my team your team attitude and even worse our actions today?

Who will initiate this change, will it to come from our political parties and that would only happen if we elect more politicians who will represent us in a more adult manner. Politicians who are not chomping at the bit to jump on any opportunity to attack the other team. Politicians who have standards that do not allow them to become supreme hypocrites when it comes to the things they say and allow to happen in their parties but not the other party.

This brings me back to the media who sees this behavior in our elected politicians and the citizens of the United States and continues to feed the beast.

As I have said for years if the media was to start reporting accurately and fairly this would then possibly stop or at least slow down the behavior of the political class which feeds the angry of the citizens, especially those who believe in the mob mentality, and then the citizens feed this anger and combativeness right back to the political class.

We as the citizens of the United States must no longer allow a political ideology or party to pit all of us against each other. We must not allow them to put us into groups or categories and watch us fight as the Romans did in their Coliseum and from this fighting garner our votes.

When it comes down to it, this combativeness that has overtaken our society, along with the erosion of our ethics and morality in our society as a whole only hurts we the people.

The Live with Renk show airs Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to noon, to let me know your thoughts call (269) 441-9595